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10 Tips to Improve your Instagram

1. Take Photos on a Camera and transfer to your smartphone

So you want to improve your instagram. Ever wondered why your photos don’t have the same quality as those drool-worthy photographers’ galleries? Many photographers and instagram enthusiasts use a digital camera to capture their moments and later transfer those to their iphone to upload. For the more speccy shots of nature, landscapes and special moments I want to capture as best as possible, I’ll use my Olympus Pen E-PL7. For the quick uploads on the go, an iPhone is my preferred weapon of choice.

2. Shoot outside of the instagram app

If you do opt for the quick and easy iphone upload, be sure to perfect your craft outside of the instagram app itself. At least while you’re learning about framing, lighting and conceptualising ideas, this is a great idea to get that one perfect shot. Don’t be afraid to take 10 (or 20) shots before you get it right… it’s true what they say: practice makes perfect!

3. Good photos require planning

Just as important as practicing and perfecting your craft is another ‘P’ word to throw into the mix – planning! A great way to source inspiration for your photos is to follow people who inspire you and let their work influence you. A great read that will encourage you to source inspiration from others is ‘Steal Like an Artist’, an impressive read that discusses the line between inspiration and stealing ideas… or more or less debugs the myth. When you find inspiration through a number of sources and turn these ideas into your own, you inevitably create something unique and bring something new to the table. Plan your approach, find a niche, and create something new!

4. Link your website to your profile

A simple step to take but one that will make a huge difference (especially for step 9) is to link to your other work. If you don’t have a website, link to another social channel you use frequently – be it twitter, snapchat or youtube. Its important to show your followers that you’re active elsewhere and encourage them to follow your work on other platforms – the more you have to offer, the better!

5. Take a lot of photos but only put your best foot forward

Its easy to fall into the trap of taking too many photos (not a bad thing), but its just as easy to fall into the trap of sharing everything and anything you capture. Be sure to take plenty of photos, but only post those that you believe are your best work. Whether you’re capturing a moment or feeling, be sure to tell a story with your instagram gallery whilst never oversharing.

6. Hold Steady

As simple as it may sound, holding the camera steady can make a world of difference to your photos. Be sure to also consider framing and cropping your photos, as well as considering editing within the instagram app.

7. Have you heard of golden hour?

Even with instagram, golden hour still applies. Its that part of the day where the sun is glistening and beams through your photos to create some of the most impressive captures. Be sure to experiment with light and learn how to use it to your advantage, it’s the best (non)filter you can get!

8. Experiment with editing apps

Whether you’re shooting your photos on a camera or your smart phone, sometimes its fun to play around with colours and see what you can create by using third party editing apps. Some of my favourites include Mextures (would seriously recommend) and slow shutter if you like to experiment with moving objects.

9. Create a community

Once you’ve started to create great photos and share them with your followers, it’s a great idea to consider how you interact and engage with your community. A community often comes about when you offer your followers quality content and you soon realise that yourself and your followers have the same passion in common. Be it travel, fashion, healthy eating or anything and everything in between… its great to create a community within the instagram community and spread the love!

10. Don’t forget to have fun with it!

As helpful as I hope these tips are, the biggest and best piece of advice for improving your instagram is just to have fun with it! Instagram can be such a fun community to be a part of when you just be yourself, show people the things you love in a way you believe showcases it best. As your number of followers grow, so to does the amount of feedback – both good and bad – but so long as you’re always having fun with it, you can’t go wrong!

Comments

Thanks for it! Great job!
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so, according to the lion’s share of users’ eperience, Zengram is on the top among other giant 3d party apps, which provide real followers. Have you ever heard about it?

I guess I’ve got a tip to share. The key to a loyal and sympathetic community is common interest. Usually I search & add many people according to geolocation, then follow then and check their accounts. Some of them do, some of them do not follow you back, so you need to get rid of the latter. To do so I use https://fast-unfollow.com/, this service supports up to 5000 unsubscriptions per day. To increase the amount of your potential followers, like and comment a lot. If you’re interested in trying my method you can enjoy a welcome gift of 1000 free unfollows once you’ve signed up.

Great tips, building a community I think can be the hardest part, I feel like my tastes are too eclectic to stick to a ‘theme’ on my instagram like some people do, even though I think it looks amazing!

I absolutely love these tips. I am desperate to get my photographs to look better – I constantly compare mine to other bloggers.. using these tips I hope to be able to get mine to a standard I can be proud of! Thank you.

I don’t own a camera (yet) so I’m always relying in my iPhone 4s. So far so good! Actually, a lot of photographers, I’ve heard, now use solely their iPhones, too, because the quality of the pictures is amazing for Instagram purposes!

Regarding filters, I believe that the best trick is to keep it simple. Nobody likes oversaturated photos that burn your eyes!

I love these tip, my absolute favorite is using the “Rule of Thirds” to capture the subject. If I’m photographing a person, I love making them look at everything but the camera. It always seems to turn out charmingly picturesque (I’ve also elaborated on all this on my blog!).

These are all such great tips, I’ve really been trying to step up my instagram game lately. I use an EyeFi card and it makes it so easy to pull photos from my camera. I just shoot raw to my CF card and low res jpg to my SD. 🙂

I know this one is a bit strange but I also think Instagram feeds look really stunning when all of their photos have the same general color scheme or overall tonality. Warm images, stark whites, darker brooding images, etc. I have a hard time with this myself but I think it looks great when an Instagram feed looks more like it has a running thematic element to it.

I can’t believe you’ve missed the golden hour!! The golden hour is that perfect light when the sun is about to set. Everything glows so magically. You cannot take a bad photo in the golden hour! Sorry when I read that I couldn’t help but respond!

I don’t know why I never thought to take pictures on my DSLR and then transfer them to my phone…duh! Why didn’t I think of that?! haha! Getting the right lighting is definitely important too. I think I’m way too lazy about instagram. I don’t plan it at all and you can tell in my photos. I’m going to try to make it a point to get better with instagram

I always do number 1 and 5 but I honestly think that number 10 is the most important one. It is so important to be you and have fun. People being just who they are always inspire me. I have noticed that I always get more likes whenever I post “happy” photos or summer photos. So I always try to do that 🙂

Such great tips. I know some people think it’s ‘cheating’ to upload photos from your camera but they’re so much better I don’t understand why you wouldn’t!

Another tip I have is to get yourself in the photo. Lots of people who are travelling take gorgeous shots of beautiful scenery or amazing cities but it’s always nice to see the face behind the camera from time to time!

I love Instagram, mainly because I love photography and Instagram always manages to inspire me. I always upload my iPhone photos though and I really need to stop doing that and start uploading my Canon shots :/